


Communion

by WhyNotFly



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, I know canonically Martin shouldn't be here but SCREW canon I want KISSEs, Kissing, M/M, Season 3 Spoilers, Sensory Overload, post-coma Jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 19:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19448305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyNotFly/pseuds/WhyNotFly
Summary: Jon couldn’t remember now how he’d occupied his time in the past.  Reading perhaps, but reading now made him sick.  He’d tried it when he first got home, but every word he read he could feel the swelling certainty of his god’s pleasure.  Each paragraph was supplication to a creature he detested.  His own eyes had betrayed him, giving and giving, vessels for something greater.****Jon wakes up from his coma and can’t stop Knowing.





	Communion

Jon should have expected to be given time off after he woke up from a coma. It was a coma. A several month long coma. He should need time to recuperate. He should need sick leave. Any normal workplace would offer him sick leave. And yet, when he saw the email sitting cold and sterile in his inbox he had to swallow a sudden wave of revulsion. One lonely sentence, black text on white, a platitude about personal time. It was signed simply with the letter L.

Jon hated that he Knew who it was from.

Getting home from the hospital had been harder than he anticipated. No one was there to help him. No one was left. But he felt fine, of course, well, maybe not fine. Different. Strong, but aching, like his whole body was a muscle that had been tensed for too long. But the world was not fine. The world was loud and bright in ways he’d never noticed before. His head spun with thoughts and observations, knowledge and conclusions. He drowned in the sight of it. There was an eye in the sky, he knew there was, he had seen it in his dreams a thousand thousand times wringing him out pulling him up, unmaking and devouring. There was an eye in the sky, but when he looked up there was nothing there but endless blue and the sharp glinting cast of the sun forcing him to look away. He felt it Watching him. He didn’t look back up.

Jon tried to take the tube home but he couldn’t. He made it four steps into the crowded station before the whirl of thoughts surrounding him became too much. Their stares pressed into him as he hunched his shoulders and fled back up onto the street, holding back vomit and tears. He could shell out for a taxi, just this once. The driver kept glancing into his rear view mirror as if he could feel that something was wrong. As if he could feel Jon watching him, even though he hadn’t lifted his face from where he’d pressed it desperately into his hands. Jon wanted to apologize, but it would only make this worse. This man did not deserve to be fed to Jon’s god. Jon did not want to feed his god. Jon wasn’t sure if this would hurt the man, if simply being near and Knowing would somehow give Beholding a foothold towards tearing his life apart. He wanted to believe it wouldn’t, but that was merely selfishness. He couldn’t look at someone without feeling that sucking, that muscle tensing surety of the Eye growing within and through him.

That same selfish part of him wished he’d fallen to a god who didn’t make him know the faces of the children and friends, the hopes and dreams of everyone he devoured in despairing, pleading worship. Jon envied those who could be a monster in peace.

Peter Lukas had made it clear that Jon’s sick leave was three days minimum and Jon was desperate for his time to be finished. He was sick for the Archives and his work. It wasn’t the familiar shaking weakness when he went too long between statements, he had been sustained with plenty of knowledge. He couldn’t stop learning. He learned about the architect who had designed his flat and the type of wood in his flooring. He learned about who had cared for his houseplants before he bought them, and about the factory workers who’d handled his mugs. He drank in knowledge about the delivery men who dropped off his food, no matter how fast he slammed the door. No, he wasn’t sick for lack of statements, he was sick with boredom. Jon couldn’t remember now how he’d occupied his time in the past. Reading perhaps, but reading now made him sick.

He’d tried it when he first got home, but every word he read he could feel the swelling certainty of his god’s pleasure. Each paragraph was supplication to a creature he detested. His own eyes had betrayed him, giving and giving, vessels for something greater. He could feel the eye in the sky hanging above him, seeing him through the petty defenses of wood and plaster. He could see it back, though it was never there when he looked out the windows. Jon tried closing his eyes but his fingertips Knew the shape of things. His nose Knew the scent of things. His ears Knew the world around him and painted it in bursting colors behind his eyelids.

“I’ve made a mistake,” Jon said aloud, to no one. Perhaps to the eye dangling so far above him, waiting to pull him in again. Perhaps to Elias, desperate for someone to tell him he’d done right. Perhaps to himself, to prove his will was his own even if his senses were not.

There was a knock at his door and Jon nearly stumbled with the shock of it. He glanced at his clock but it was nowhere near dinnertime, he hadn’t even ordered food yet, and he wasn’t expecting any visitors. For a moment, Jon considered leaving it shut, saving whoever was on the other side from becoming an unwilling meal for his hungry eyes, but he couldn’t. Maybe it was the boredom. Maybe it was his natural curiosity. Maybe it was the Eye itself. It didn’t matter anymore.

He swung it open and there was Martin, hand raised as if caught while deciding whether to knock again. The same Martin that had always been. Jon nearly cried with the relief of it. It must have shown on his face because Martin’s soft cheeks screwed up with worry, the same expression he gave to Jon so many times before. Known. Known. Known.

“Jon? Are you alright?” (the same voice the same cadence) “I can’t believe Peter didn’t tell me you’d woken up, well, I can believe it, but it’s still awful. I had to run into Melanie of all people and I only learned it from her because she was complaining about how you’d be coming back in soon.”

“Martin,” said Jon, and it meant nothing and it meant everything. He just said it to say.

“Yeah?”

“Martin.” Jon leaned his face on the door-frame, overcome.

Martin hurried inside, helping Jon over to sit on the couch with a sudden burst of nervous energy. “Jon? Jon, tell me what’s wrong.”

“What’s wrong? Martin I was dead. How do you think I came back from that? It’s over. I’m one of them now.”

“I know you must have made some kind of a _weird_ deal with the Eye, I’m not a...I’m not an idiot Jon. But you’re still you, aren’t you? I mean,” Martin blushed slightly and Jon Noticed, “you still look like you.”

“I am still me. I think.” Jon sighed, refusing to meet Martin’s gaze. “But it’s like the Eye is...is under my skin. Whatever I do, whatever I see or touch or, or anything it knows too. I can’t not serve it.”

“But you’re still you,” Martin pressed, leaning forward. “That’s what matters, right?”

“Is it?” Jon’s laugh was sharp and empty.

“It’s what matters to me.”

And then they were both leaning forward, and their mouths met before Jon could stop and think. Before he could panic. Before that spark of fear could whisper _you’ve never done this before_. But it was too late. He could feel the eye dangling in the sky above him, learning with him. Cataloging the taste of Martin’s mouth. Measuring Martin’s hands against his back. Knowing the soft press of his lips like a benediction. Jon pushed him away with a scream.

“What’s wrong?” Martin asked desperately, but Jon could only stare at his skin, bubbling, writhing, masses of tiny eyes like silver worms digging into the soft flesh where Jon had placed his hands. The roof of his flat was gone and the sky above them was black and starless. There was an eye in the sky and Jon knew it was there. He’d always known it was there.

Martin’s mouth opened, stretching too wide, too far apart, and in the center of his tongue was a single round eyeball.

“Jon?” said Martin’s mouth, but his tongue said, _You are my vessel_.

 _Partake of your communion_.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic on AO3! Thank you for reading~ Please please come bug me on tumblr @apatheticbutterflies I post a bunch of TMA meta and fanfiction


End file.
